Personal care products are commercially available in a variety of forms including antiperspirants, deodorants, hand and body lotions, shampoos, liquid and bar soaps, body washes, disposable diapers, and the like. Most of these products contain perfumes which help provide a pleasant fragrance during or after application of the product, or which otherwise help to hide or mask malodors associated with the use of such products.
Many personal care products are never commercialized because it is often too difficult to sufficiently hide or mask malodors associated with the use of such products. Especially problematic are malodors associated with the use of personal care products containing styling polymers, volatile liquid carriers, or combinations thereof. These malodors are even more problematic and difficult to hide or mask with most perfumes when higher concentrations of such malodor-producing polymers and/or malodor-producing liquid carriers are used in the personal care product. These higher concentrations are often necessary to provide improved product benefits such as skin and hair softness, hairstyle, mildness, increased deposition of active ingredients, fragrance longevity, and so forth.
Polymer or liquid carrier malodors, especially those in personal care products, can be made less offensive by using even higher concentrations of perfumes. Although the addition of such higher concentrations of perfumes can alter or reduce the overall offensive character of the polymer or liquid carrier malodors, it often results in an undesirably overbearing perfume odor that is especially offensive when associated with a personal care product. Even when the higher perfume concentrations adequately modify, hide or otherwise mask the polymer or liquid carrier malodors, these higher concentrations do not necessarily result in improved perfume substantivity or longevity, thus resulting in the recurrence of liquid carrier or polymer malodors after the higher perfume concentrations have initially volatilized and no longer have an impact on malodors.
It has now been found that a select combination of perfume materials as defined herein can be incorporated into personal care compositions to effectively reduce the intensity of or mask the malodors associated with the use of malodor-producing polymers, malodor-producing liquid carriers or combinations thereof. This select combination of perfume chemicals comprises a highly volatile perfume, an ionone, and musk.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an odor masking material suitable for use in personal care or other compositions containing malodor-producing liquid carriers and/or malodor-producing styling polymers, wherein the odor masking material effectively reduces or masks the malodor associated with the use of such compositions. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such an odor masking material which contains a select combination of a highly volatile perfume, an ionone, and musk.